This application is a continuation in part of commonly owned application Ser. No. 057,730, filed June 2, 1987, now abandoned, which is a continuation in part of commonly owned application Ser. No. 027,152 filed Mar. 17, 1987, now abandoned.
In many research and experimental facilities it is important to be able to align an optical fiber termination with a light path or another optical fiber termination for coupling radiation therebetween. While there exist various connector or coupler schemes for special applications and which provide for a preset alignment of fiber and light path or active devices, such special purpose elements do not lend themselves readily to the flexibility required in experimental and research applications. Alignment systems which have existed in the past for accomplishing flexible alignment of beams and fiber terminations have been awkward and required substantial time and effort to achieve a fiber alignment function.
In addition, in experimental applications, fibers are typically processed on the bench and cleaved by experimenters in order to provide the termination. Often times the quality of the termination, particularly as it relates to being able to accept radiation from a path into the fiber, is not always adequate. In addition, in launching radiation into a fiber it is often optimally achieved by placing the fiber termination at a point of focus and thus minimum waste size of the radiation in order to launch the maximum energy into the fiber itself. Further, often experiments require nonvisible light, such as infrared or ultraviolet laser radiation, to be aligned with the optical fiber. Such alignments necessitate the use of special complex viewers for viewing nonvisible radiation in the visible light range.